Conventionally known is a technology in which a tablet terminal is used to upload document data to a server on a network, and the document data is acquired over the network by operating a multifunction peripheral, and the multifunction peripheral is caused to output a printout of the document data.
In relation to use of a piece of document data, there are generally cases in which a user wishes to distribute document data to a plurality of users, and to allow the document data to be shared among the users. However, in a system such as that mentioned above, sometimes authentication information of the user who has uploaded the document data is required to acquire the document data over the network and to output a printout using a multifunction peripheral. The user who wishes to distribute the electronic document may therefore communicate his/her authentication information to the other users, or distribute the document data itself via an email.
Disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2001-290742 (Patent Document 1) to enable a mobile telephone to transmit electronic document data to a server, and to cause a designated output device to output the document is a configuration in which a piece of print data is transmitted to a server via an email of a mobile telephone of a user, and the designated output device is caused to output the designated document. Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2007-249939 (Patent Document 2) discloses a technology allowing a user to receive a printout that is output by a printer by allowing the printer to receive authentication information from a user who is to attempting to acquire the printout, and by causing a printer management server to verify the received authentication information, and to allow the reserved printer to output a printout only if the verification is successful.
Such an approach of notifying the authentication information or distributing the document data itself, however, was insufficient from a viewpoint of security in applications in which a piece of document data is distributed to a plurality of users or shared among a plurality of users, because leakage of the authentication information or the document data may occur. It has been also considered problematic that any multifunction peripheral capable of receiving document data over a network can output the document data.
The technology disclosed in Patent Document 1 is intended to allow an email user who is a user of a mobile telephone not having a printing function to output a printout via a designated output device, and Patent Document 2, too, is not developed considering the applications for distributing and sharing document data to and among a plurality of users. Based on this background, development of a novel information processing system capable of distributing and sharing electronic information in a privileged manner has been waited for.
Therefore, there is a need to provide an information processing system, a management device, and an information output method, capable of distributing information for acquiring and outputting an electronic document to be distributed, in a manner allowing outputs of the electronic document to be made within a limited scope of privilege.